India has retained its third position in Mint's Emerging Markets Tracker for October, marking the second consecutive month at this ranking, despite facing significant economic headwinds from declining exports and subdued stock market performance.
Economic Challenges Weigh on India's Score
The country's economic performance faced substantial pressure from multiple fronts during October. India's export growth contracted by 11.8% year-on-year, representing the sharpest decline among all emerging markets covered in the tracker. This export slump proved to be a major drag on the nation's overall score.
Equity markets showed minimal growth, with stock market capitalization rising just 0.2% month-on-month, positioning India as one of the weakest performers on this crucial metric. The Indian rupee continued its downward trend, slipping by 0.1% against major currencies, though this represented a slower depreciation compared to the 0.8% decline recorded in the previous month.
Indonesia's Remarkable Ascent to Top Position
While India struggled with export challenges, Indonesia staged an impressive comeback, surging to the top of the rankings from seventh place in September. Indonesia secured a composite score of 69, the highest among the nine emerging markets tracked, driven by multiple positive economic indicators.
The Southeast Asian nation demonstrated robust economic health with an strong>11.9% jump in exports, significant expansion in manufacturing activity, and solid stock market gains. These positive developments were further supported by well-contained inflation, creating a favorable economic environment that propelled Indonesia to the leadership position.
Regional Economic Landscape and Methodology
China maintained its strong presence in the rankings, securing second place with a score of 65. The world's second-largest economy benefited from robust import cover of 15.8 months and steady GDP growth of 4.8% in the September quarter. However, China also faced export challenges, with export growth contracting by 1.1%, while its currency showed no significant change compared to the previous month.
The Mint Emerging Markets Tracker, launched in September 2019, provides a comprehensive monthly summary of economic activity across nine large emerging markets. The assessment is based on seven high-frequency indicators: real GDP growth, manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI), export growth, retail inflation, import cover, exchange rate movement, and stock market performance.
The tracker employs a systematic methodology where the best-performing economy on each indicator receives a score of 100, while the worst performer gets zero. Other economies receive linearly-interpolated relative scores. A country's composite index score represents the simple average of its seven indicator scores.
It's important to note that the rankings are provisional and scores will be updated once all the latest data becomes available. The tracker previously included Russia as a tenth country, but it has been temporarily excluded since some data has not been reliably available since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict.
